Meandering

Saturday, the Sabboth ... has come and I've been thinking about what I want to do with the Bible Surfing blog. I really like thinking about religious themes and reading the scripture. I'm not all that sure what my beliefs about the scripture are and I think I talked about that some time back.

I'm in a men's bible group and we meet once a week, although I often can't make it since I have conflicts on Thursday nights fairly often. Each of the men uses one or more translations of their choice and that's at least part of the fun of it. We're always getting into something like: "Read your verse twelve again! I can't believe it. It says almost the exact opposite of my verse 12." We're reading proverbs right now. Other times it's just an argument over adjectives or the emphasis.

Things like that make me a little reluctant to imagine that the bible, at least in translation, is the word for word literal word of God. Sorry, too many problems with that. This doesn't mean that the original documents were not Divine Revelation, although I think a rigid dictation theory is ridiculous too.

C.S. Lewis makes the point about John 7:17 ¹⁷If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. — Lewis takes this as meaning that true understanding of God's teaching requires an obedient heart before all else.

I think it is important to read scripture broadly too and not merely expect to understand the meaning by proof texting. Every scrap of scripture occurs in a context and understanding demands not only understanding the text but understanding the context in which it was written and delivered. Failing that we are likely to generalize from specific guidance and vice versa.

I've been thinking that maybe I'll just start putting up reflections possibly on the scriptures the men's bible group are reading or perhaps what spiritual books the spiritual book club is reading. I'll probably go back and do a little more Genesis too.